Re: libidn-1.33 fails to build library when some doc tools are missing

[Jeffrey Walton]

On Fri, Jan 5, 2018 at 7:19 AM, Tim Rühsen <address@hidden> wrote:
> On 01/05/2018 12:45 PM, Jeffrey Walton wrote:
>> I'm trying to build libidn to use with Wget. As far as I know Wget
>> does not require man pages. Wget will build just fine without them.
>>
>> Building libidn-1.33 results in:
>>
>> make[4]: Entering directory '/home/scripts/libidn-1.33/doc'
>> /bin/bash /home/scripts/libidn-1.33/build-aux/missing help2man \
>>         --name="Internationalized Domain Names command line tool" \
>>         --output=idn.1 ../src/idn
>> /home/scripts/libidn-1.33/build-aux/missing: line 81: help2man:
>> command not found
>> WARNING: 'help2man' is missing on your system.
>>          You should only need it if you modified a dependency of a man page.
>>          You may want to install the GNU Help2man package:
>>          <http://www.gnu.org/software/help2man/>
>> Makefile:2209: recipe for target 'idn.1' failed
>>
>> Perhaps it would be a good idea to to avoid docs when tools are not present.
>
> Thanks, but that seems to be a bad idea. As the text says
> "You should only need it if you modified a dependency of a man page."
>
> So if you are 'developer', you just install all dependencies.

That's not your decision to make. It is my decision.

> Just continuing is bad for all (package) maintainers as they might fell
> over half-baken packages/installations much later (e.g. when users
> complain).

Provide a configure option. I am happy to use it.

> If you are 'user' (unpack tarball, ./configure, make, make install), you
> shouldn't need help2man since you don't start editing files that require
> a (developer) rebuild. That's one of the ideas of a tarball.

I'd love to, but I don't have the luxury of using the latest Autotools.

Jeff